Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXXIV, Energy Diplomacy and Global Issues

169. Memorandum From Harold Saunders of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow)¹

Washington, September 1, 1967.

SUBJECT

• Middle East Water

As you know, we decided back in June that the US should not be the obvious author of a big economic plan for the Middle East.² Therefore, we stimulated the World Bank to do the job, and its staff is at work.

However, we have one operational problem for which we can not depend on the Bank’s help. In any case, the Bank’s plans probably wouldn’t be ready in time to do us any good.

This problem is the probable necessity of renewing discussions on the Israeli desalting plant. The updated Kaiser study will be ready in its final form by the beginning of October. Shortly thereafter, we can expect the Israelis to want to begin talking where Bunker left off.

Our problem—in addition to the technical and financial ones so familiar to us—is what political quid pro quo to exact if we decide to go ahead with this plant. This time last year we were talking about requiring the Israelis to put all their nuclear activities under IAEA control in return for our cooperation. I was never too sure that would be a feasible deal and it may be even less so now that Israel’s future security requirements are in a greater state of flux. But entirely apart from that, we have new problems of wanting to use anything we do in this field in the context of an overall political settlement.

Even forgetting about anything so dramatic as the Strauss plan,³ it’s obvious that desalting might inject a new element into management of water in the Jordan River Basin. As I understand it, all the Jordan Valley plans to date have been written in terms of water available from natural sources. Now desalting makes it possible to bring new water sources—particularly brackish and hitherto unusable water—into play. We need to know what sort of Jordan Plan one might write making use of desalting technology.

No one realistically expects to come up with a technically sound version of the Strauss plan in the next few months.⁴ What we can come up with, however, is enough of a vision to know what we can require of the Israelis to make their plant the first phase of an overall Jordan Valley plan which might lead to a second desalting plant sometime in the next few years.

What we would be shooting for is some Israeli commitment on future limits on use of Jordan Valley water and their commitment to make that water available for developing the West Bank. We have begun the staff work in our refugee plan that moves us toward some kind of development arrangement on the West Bank. What we have not done is the staff work which would make it possible for us in very specific terms and requirements to use the desalting plant as leverage to move the Israelis toward the broader objectives of regional water management and refugee settlement.

I understand that it would be possible in about sixty days to do enough in-house work to put us in that position. We would have to do this with carefully drawn terms of reference and without any publicity whatsoever. Going ahead in this limited way by ourselves need not cross anything the World Bank does. But I see no alternative at this stage to our putting ourselves in a position to handle this initially bilateral negotiation with Israel.

I do not think we need to clear further with the President on this. We would undoubtedly want Luke Battle through Bob Woodward to keep a firm grip on the study, but Frank di Luzio in Interior with the help of a couple of outside experts would have to do most of the work. Do you see any objection?

Hal

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Subject File, Desalting Projects, Vol. II. Secret. Copies were sent to John Walsh, Alan Novak, Lucius Battle, and Robert Woodward. A handwritten note by Saunders next to their names reads: “I’ll send these as a means of spelling out the problem after we’ve talked.”
2. No record of such a decision occurring before the Strauss-Eisenhower proposal has been found, but in an August 29 memorandum to Valenti, Rostow noted: “Shortly after the Mid-East war ended, we decided that we ought to avoid the appearance of developing any big US economic plan for the area. We thought the ‘made in the USA’ label might kill a good idea, and besides, the President has taken the general line that, by standing back, we might draw out local initiative. (I’m sure you above all understand this tack.) However, we recognized the importance of having such a plan. We asked the World Bank whether it could do the quiet planning necessary to undergird a possible economic proposal to be made at the right political moment.” (Ibid.)
3. Document 166.
4. Work on the Oak Ridge demonstration project, which inspired the Strauss plan, was continuing. A preliminary report was scheduled to be presented to the President’s Science Advisory Council in mid-October with a final report available “before December.” (Memorandum from Hornig to Califano, September 22; National Archives and Records Administration, RG 359, Office of Science and Technology, OST Administrative History, E—Water Resources)